I love the way Al Bore (the hypocritical corporate profiteer) pushed to get the sale consummated before January 1, 2013 so he would not have to pay the higher tax rates imposed by his friend Barack Obama. I wonder if the fat Emir of Qatar will re-hire Keith Olbermann.

by Kelly McParland

There was always a slight odour to the deal in which former U.S. vice-president Al Gore sold his struggling cable channel to Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Middle East broadcaster. And it’s not going away.

Initial criticism of the sale focused on the hypocrisy of Gore, who owes much of his considerable wealth and fame to his high-profile role as globe-trotting environmental campaigner, selling out to a broadcaster controlled by the government of Qatar, an oil-rich country run by an absolute monarchy that gets its wealth from the very product Gore blames for the horrors of climate change.

Gore reportedly stood to make $100 million from the sale of his Current TV, and pushed to have the deal close before the end of last year, so he could avoid the higher rate of tax due to take effect under President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat. He defended the sale by claiming Al Jazeera provided top-notch coverage of climate issues, and insisted that both Al Jazeera and Current were founded “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.

That claim is looking a bit dubious these days, as some of Al Jazeera’s top talent has been deserting the network amid claims it has become a shill for its Qatari owners and other Middle East autocrats. Spiegelonline, the web version of the German newsmagazine, has a lengthy report on the departures, which it says includes reporters and anchors from Paris, London, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo. Though previously lauded for its willingness to confront Middle Eastern regimes, it says, since the advent of the Arab Spring it “has shamelessly fawned upon the new rulers.”

Today, when Egyptians protest against President Mohammad Morsi and the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Jazeera is often critical of them, in the style of the old pro-government TV station. Conversely, according to ex-correspondent [Aktham] Suliman, Al-Jazeera executives have ordered that Morsi’s decrees should be portrayed as pearls of wisdom.[……] “In Egypt we have become the palace broadcaster for Morsi.”

It reports that the Emir of Qatar, who visited Gaza in October and pledged $400 million to Hamas, its terrorist rulers, is increasingly intolerant of independent voices:

A prominent correspondent who, until one year ago, used to report in Beirut for the network, says: “Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports — not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar,” he says. “In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit.”

Critics say that the emir now essentially trusts only his own people: The network’s director general is now a relative of the emir, as is the head of the advisory board. They are seemingly required to follow political guidelines laid down by the palace — instead of serving the interests of viewers. [……..]

Signs of disaffection were evident even before the sale of Current TV closed. In September, Britain’s The Guardian reported that staff members had protested after being ordered to re-edit a UN report to give more prominence to the emir.

[………]

Journalists had produced a package of the UN debate, topped with excerpts of President Obama’s speech, last Tuesday when a last-minute instruction came from Salah Negm, the Qatar-based news director, who ordered the video to be re-edited to lead with the comments from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

Despite protests from staff that the emir’s comments – a repetition of previous calls for Arab intervention in Syria – were not the most important aspect of the UN debate, the two-minute video was re-edited and Obama’s speech was relegated to the end of the package.

The emir’s visit to Gaza came just a few weeks later, the first visit by a head of state since Hamas gained control in 2007. Al Jazeera paid $500 million for Current TV not for its audience — it averaged just 40,000 on most nights — but because it can be viewed in 40 million U.S. homes. The idea was to provide a conduit to U.S. viewers for independent-minded coverage of the Middle East. But an organization increasingly aligned to the political agenda of an all-powerful Qatari emir, and friend to Hamas, may find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm among a U.S. audience, even if it has a friend in Al Gore.

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We're not easily offended and don't want people to think they have to walk on eggshells around here (like at another place that shall remain nameless) but of course, there is a limit to everything.

Can you imagine what a disaster Al Gore would have been after 9-11? The man doesn’t put the needs of the Country anywhere in his priority list. He is as self-centered as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Why is it that the Democrats can only produce infantile narcissists as Presidential contendes? And why can’t the Republicans beat them more handily when they do? It is a sad truth: you can fool enough of the people most of the time. Promise goodies, and to “feel their pain”, and the electorate will make you President.

@ rain of lead:
Can you imagine what a disaster Al Gore would have been after 9-11? The man doesn’t put the needs of the Country anywhere in his priority list. He is as self-centered as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Why is it that the Democrats can only produce infantile narcissists as Presidential contendes? And why can’t the Republicans beat them more handily when they do? It is a sad truth: you can fool enough of the people most of the time. Promise goodies, and to “feel their pain”, and the electorate will make you President.

Mike C. wrote:
If they keep getting more biased and less journalistic, they might pass CNN in a few years, and perhaps even aspire to beating out MSNBC on that score.
MSNBC is the gold standard of media bias. They make the BBC seem sober and prudent.

As Twitchy reported, the jackass known as Alec Baldwin has been accused of hurling racial epithets at a New York Post photographer. Many weren’t surprised; Baldwin is a renowned cretin. Plus, scratch a leftist and find a racist (and sexist).

This incident apparently happened over the weekend
I thought that all of the racists were Tea Partiers./

Actor Alec Baldwin allegedly called a black Post photographer a racial epithet, a “crackhead” and a “drug dealer” during a confrontation on an East Village street yesterday morning, prompting police to intervene.

Baldwin had first been approached by a Post reporter while walking his dogs outside his East 10th Street pad at around 10:50 a.m. He was asked for comment on a lawsuit against his wife, Hilaria, involving her work as a yoga instructor.

The “30 Rock’’ star grabbed the reporter, Tara Palmeri, by her arm and told her, “I want you to choke to death,” Palmeri told police, for whom she played an audiotape of the conversation.

Listening to the awestruck babble which has occurred in the aftermath of the meteor hitting Russia, one can readily see how a primitive people would encase a large meteor fragment in a silver vagina, stick it in a big black cube, and build a religion around it.

We are supposedly modern people, chock-full of scientific knowledge, fully aware that big rocks do occasionally come drifting into the orbit of the Earth and fall out of the sky. Yet the way people are going on about it doesn’t sound that different from how the benighted Bedouins of the Arabian desert would have reacted a couple of thousand years ago.